Monthly Archives: May 2010

Five

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Ely,

I’m a little sad you are 5 today, only because 4 was such a great year for you. You changed so much, and my shy, quiet, little boy is almost nowhere to be found. I look at you now and you are so tall and grown up. If I want to see a baby face, I have to turn my gaze to your sister. You love to talk to people (young and old!) and have lots of friends. If you don’t know anyone at the playground, you will figure out who is about your age and make him or her into a new friend. You are on the cusp of reading completely on your own, and counting to 100 is a breeze. You still want to know how everything works, and you are always observing the world around you for any change. I’m excited to see you enter Kindergarten in a couple of months, and I hope that you will always love school as much as you do now. There were almost too many changes for me this week, with the end of your Montessori school, your beloved classroom B, and now a new age. But, you are always eager for new places and new adventures and even though the past was great, you know that more good things in your life will come.

I’m glad we get to celebrate your birthday on a holiday, because the whole family is together on this special day. It’s also a treat to have your great grandfather in town. You may be 5 today, but he is now 86. This morning, you were excited to get a new birthday shirt from me, but as your mother, I didn’t even kid myself that it was a better present than your new Lego firetruck.

Slow Summer Stitching

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I’ve decided to join Beki’s slow summer stitching along. What could be better than working on an Alabama Chanin inspired stitching project with a lot of other women doing the same?  I was actually just thinking about my next large hand sewing project – as we have a couple of big and small trips coming up this Summer – when Beki posted her along idea. She has put together some inspirational photos (including one of my bloomers skirt) as well as project ideas, if you are interested in joining or can’t figure out what to make.

So what to make?  Clothes are always exciting, but I think I want to make a quilt.  When I went to the Alabama Chanin trunk show in my city last year, I loved all the clothes, pillows, and fabric samples but what blew me away were the quilts, especially the American flag quilt.  I think a quilt will be the perfect way to constantly have a small stitching project at hand, use up my random cotton jersey pieces, and experiment and have fun with stencils and different types of stitching.  And seeing these recent amazing quilts has only made me want one of my own in a bad way.  Maybe all this slow summer stitching will lead into cozy winter cuddling…

This Summer

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With only 3 more days of school left, I’m thinking about Summer.  Today’s weather (90 degrees and 90% humidity) doesn’t help either.

This Summer, I will…

  • spend a lot of time at the pool
  • have the kids in swimming lessons
  • spend more time outside and
  • try not to complain about the heat so much
  • make my own yogurt
  • try some new homemade popsicle flavors (first up is lime)
  • eat, preserve, or giveaway all the produce from the garden
  • get together with friends often (mine and the kids’)
  • go camping for at least one night
  • get the girl potty trained
  • experiment with Summer cocktails
  • grill a lot
  • pick some kind of fruit at a U-pick place
  • empty the dishwasher in the morning
  • swim in a lake
  • get the patio and firepit started
  • see my sister-in-law get married and gain a new brother-in-law
  • wake up in a good mood every day

Okay, I’m ready for the new season to begin.  What are your Summer plans?

Garden at Dusk

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The warm temps followed by more rain and cooler temps has made everything grow like crazy.  The garden looked so beautiful in the evening light with the remains of the afternoon rain on the leaves.

A Box of Joy

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We decided not to join a CSA this year.  With the expanded garden and the plan to grow a lot more food, it didn’t seem prudent to invest in a farm share.  I know at the height of Summer, it will be hard for us to eat, store, and give away all our garden produce and I didn’t want to add more weekly produce to the mix.  Right now though, I’m a little sad not to have a CSA and I’m jealous of all my friends with them, because they got strawberries in their boxes this week.  I loved getting that first box full of crispy lettuces, spring onions and garlic, and a pint or two of beautiful, sweet red strawberries.  Our patch has only produced a few berries so far, and my urge for more is strong.

So, I was very happy this afternoon, when in a neighborhood I haunt, I stumbled upon a new market and deli on its opening day that specializes in local food.  I was even happier when I spied quarts and quarts of local, ripe strawberries in the windows and on the shelves.  The credit card machine wasn’t set up yet and I didn’t have any cash, but the owner was really nice and took my check so I could take some strawberries with me.

One the drive home, I couldn’t think about anything besides strawberries and what I was going to do with them.  The thing about just picked strawberries is that one day they aren’t quite ripe, then the next day they are perfect, then the day after that they are too ripe and covered in mold.  I try never to let the mold part happen. If the newly bought quart was perfectly ripe, I thought as I got closer to home, we would eat them as is or with a simple cake like a pound cake for dessert.  They weren’t quite perfectly ripe though, so I scraped that plan and pulled out the recipe for strawberry cake.

I can’t remember when I first made this cake – I think it was two summers ago when I needed something simple to make that would use up a quart of strawberries that were dangerously close to entering the blue mold phase. Once I made this cake, I had to make it again and again until the strawberries were completely gone from the farmers’ markets. The cake batter is simple and fast.  In fact, the longest part besides the cooking time, is washing and slicing the berries.  Everyone loves this cake.  I’ve served it with freshly whipped cream as well as homemade vanilla ice cream, but it is really best on its own.  You also don’t need to fuss with arranging the cut berries in a pretty patten on top of the cake batter, because the batter will always ooze up around them creating a rustic looking dessert.  I love that this is a Martha recipe, but I don’t need to go all Martha in the assembly. I also think it is fun to bake a cake in a pie pan. In the Winter, I’ve replaced the strawberries with fresh cranberries, which is also tasty, but my heart will always belong to strawberry cake.

It is a good thing the kids ate most of their healthy food tonight for dinner, because I would have felt bad denying them strawberry cake.

Digging Out

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Clean up is still going on here.  Rebuilding is just getting started.  We’re in the middle of a huge water shortage, and tap water should only be used for food preparation and cooking (hello navy showers and wearing dirty clothes). I passed a FEMA center the other day, and it was just weird to see the huge trailer set up in the parking lot of a movie theater.  The Flood - which is now being called a 1000 year flood - is still very much on people’s minds. But, life has to go on too. As much as I just want to help people and volunteer in the relief efforts right now, I’ve realized that I also need to continue doing what I would normally be doing. Will and I have a business to run, which is the livelihood of many other people besides us, and we have a lot of big auctions coming up in May and June.  This weekend was our church’s big Herb Fair and the annual Tennessee Arts and Crafts Association Tennessee crafts show, and it would have been a shame not to support these people who have worked hard and who also are most likely hurting after The Flood.  Same with the various farmers’ markets around town – it was probably even more important to support local growers this weekend, as most of them have land close to rivers and creeks and lost some to most to all of their crops and equipment.  It is hard to walk the line between the normal and the abnormal right now, especially when the sun is out and shining on a lovely Spring day.

We did some other digging this weekend.  After trying for several weekends, it was finally dry enough to rent a sod cutter to create our new garden beds.  We made a large grid around our current plots, and now have fifteen 4×8 sections for growing food, herbs, and flowers.  Will was very excited to rent the sod cutter; it worked out as well as we expected, and we loved that it took only an afternoon to get result that would have taken weeks or months by hand.  The thing is heavy though (like 300 pounds heavy), and after a couple of hours Will couldn’t maneuver it any more.  I hoped to make some new flower beds at the same time, but those will have to wait until we rent it again when we start work on our patio/firepit area. My job was to roll up the sections of sod, which we moved to other parts of the yard that needed grass or holes filled in.  My parents also got some of our sod sections for along their new driveway – Happy Mother’s Day, Mom! Now if only I had a pallet of bricks, I could outline all beds and be happier.  Eventually we’ll start investing in wood and soil and create raised beds on each of these sections, but right now we’re just trying to grow more food for little money. Time to get planting.

Hi

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I have a lot to say, but we have no internet.  AT&T is under water, and there is no telling when service will be back.  My link to all that is happening in my world and beyond is severed.

If you still don’t know what happened here or the severity of the flood, go here or here.  You will be in tears.

I’ve gotten a lot of requests about what can other people do to help, and right now the best and biggest aid is through donations.  The media has not covered this natural disaster well, and when people do not know something bad has happened or do not know exactly how bad it is, monetary aid is less than what it would be. Any donation, even just $5, to one of the three local organizations running flood clean up and relief – Red Cross of Middle TN, Community Foundation of Middle TN, and Hands on Nashville – will make a huge difference to thousands and thousands of people here.

Feeling Helpless

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It got worse.  The rain that started early Saturday morning finally ended late Sunday afternoon, with an estimated 15-18″ in about 36 hours.  The large river that flows through my city is over 50 feet (on Friday it was at a normal 19 feet and flood stage begins at 40 feet) and hasn’t crested yet.  Downtown is flooding.  The cities just to the South and West of here are completely flooded, due to another river that went above any recorded height.  Anyone who lives near a creek or stream is flooded.  Several bridges are buckling or gone.  Levees are leaking. Parking lots filled with water in minutes covering the tops of cars and destroying businesses.  The farmer’s market is under water. If any part of your house was underground, it now has anywhere from several inches to several feet of water.  All schools are closed, as well as across the mid state.

I couldn’t do anything yesterday but stream the news, and look to twitter and facebook for updates which were remarkable.  People were posting photos and info on areas that were flooding as it happened.  It was better than any emergency newscast, and I could not pull myself away even when I wanted to.  There seemed to be little national news coverage, and I still can’t find much this morning.

The sun is shining now, but my spirits still feel like it’s raining. I’m safe, my house is dry (minus a few small leaks), our business only had a little water come in the front door, but thousands of people cannot say the same and it isn’t even close to over yet.

Needle Your Thread

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Where to begin about the day that was today?

It started very early, with all of us attending Ely’s Suzuki violin concert.  There were about 10 children who played individual pieces on the violin or cello.  Since Ely has only played for 3 weeks now, he didn’t play but bowed and showed the audience how he could hold his violin on his shoulder with his jaw and chin.  He did so well, and was so excited about being in the concert.  All the children were great, and they all seemed happy and excited to perform their pieces.   I’m still learning about the Suzuki method, but what a great idea to have performance be an early and constant part of musical study.  The benefits were evident in the small concert hall.

Afterwards, I went to Natalie Chanin’s workshop.   It was great.  Really great.  Wonderful actually. Twenty women attended, braving the severe rainstorms and coming from as far away as Atlanta and South Alabama.  We all got kits that were especially designed for this specific workshop – a cream t-shirt with Angie’s fall stencil running along one side.  Natalie taught us about cotton and physics, stitches and design options, and kept us entertained all morning with stories from her life.  I didn’t get a lot of stitching done, and I was too preoccupied to take photos.  My favorite part of the workshop was seeing how twenty women could turn the same t-shirt into twenty completely different pieces.  I decided to use mine as a sampler to try new-to-me techniques like relief applique and backstitching.  Natalie said many memorable things, but what stuck with me the most was when she said it is better to needle your thread, than thread your needle.  And she is right – when I tried it, the eye of the needle slipped easily over the thread.

Other memorable workshop moments:  getting a free cloth bag (in Amy Butler fabrics) from Green Bag Lady, admiring Alexia’s (aka Anna Maria’s newest assistant) gorgeous appliqued tank dress, chatting and stitching with one of my son’s Montessori teachers, talking sewing/children/pregnancy with a friend of a friend, watching Natalie stitch on a panel for a facets skirt (maybe my next skirt?), hearing about book #3 (and the last) coming out in 2012, admiring Sara’s cool poetry/text skirt that I couldn’t believe was eight years old (no planned obsolescence in Alabama Chanin clothing), and getting an unexpected store credit which I used by picking out new Oliver + S and Anna Maria patterns. A very full morning indeed.

The afternoon was full too, but full of rain and a couple of tornados.  I’m not sure how much rain fell but guesses are 8-10 inches, and it still hasn’t stopped.  Flooding is everywhere – all three interstates are closed, and the city is under a civil emergency.  No one is supposed to drive anywhere.  The photos and video footage are unbelievable and one person drowned when their car filled with water on the interstate. I’m kind of afraid of tomorrow. I don’t know how it could get worse, but I’ve never experienced a 100 year flood before.

I feel very lucky tonight.  Lucky that I had a very special morning, and that I am safe and warm in a mostly dry house (several roof leaks occurred today).  I hope everyone I experienced today with got home safely, and really just everyone period.